Worth noting the words we use...

Jeremy Hogan jeremy.hogan at gmail.com
Sun Jun 19 18:42:43 UTC 2005


On 6/19/05, Jeff Spaleta <jspaleta at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/19/05, Karsten Wade <kwade at redhat.com> wrote:
> > The actual term is 'swag', as in what pirates receive when practicing
> > their trade.  The usage of schwag is a verbal transmutation.
> >
> > Regardless, both are slang with some potentially vulgar definitions.
> > The downside is that swag has a connotative meaning that is hard to
> > replace with another word.  Have to do some thinking ...

Swag started out as meaning cheap sales leave behinds, but is
generally accepted (in English) to mean any sort of branded
merchandise. It's often still cheap, since it's usually given away.
You can just always just call the items what they are as you roll them
out: hats, tees, CDs, etc.

Or something like loot, stuff, gear, Fedora-branded-promotional-bling.

--jeremy




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